


Fools Rush in Where Angels Fear to Tread

by firecat



Category: Der Himmel über Berlin | Wings of Desire (1987)
Genre: Angels, Emotions, Fortune Telling, Gen, Tarot, palmistry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:28:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25523608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firecat/pseuds/firecat
Summary: After the angel Damiel decides to become human, Peter—another former angel—convinces him to visit a fortune-teller, who seems to know a lot of things about him.
Collections: Froday Flash Fiction Little & Monthly Specials 2020





	Fools Rush in Where Angels Fear to Tread

**Author's Note:**

> FFFC 100th Special Challenge  
> Table D: Fairytale/Fantasy/SciFi  
> Written for the prompt: (88) fortune teller

“Do I literally cross your palm?” says Damiel to the fortune-teller. “I’m new at this.” 

Damiel is millennia old, but he’s new at everything. He’s only been mortal and human for a few days.

“As you wish,” says the fortune teller. She has a French accent. 

Damien puts some coins into the palm she holds out. Her hand vanishes into the many scarves draping her and returns empty.

The fortune-teller gazes at Damiel’s face for a long time. He knows what she sees — a white man, heading into middle age, with receding dark hair. Unhandsome, except for his lips, especially when they curve in a soft smile, and his eyes, full of compassion and curiosity.

She picks up an oversized deck of cards and quickly shuffles. Then she lays three cards facedown on the small, round table between them.

“You made an important decision recently,” she says. “It changed how you and those around you see you.” She turns over the card on Damiel’s right, her left. “This card represents how you see yourself.”

The card is labeled “The Fool.” A young person of indeterminate gender, holding a bag and a flower, is looking up at the sunlit sky. He is about to step off a cliff.

 _I certainly did fall,_ thinks Damiel to himself. Not in the sense that Lucifer fell, cast out. Rather, because angels prefer the sky, and high places, and now he is Earth-bound. He doesn’t miss the rooftops now. He wonders if he will come to miss them later. _Wondering_ is new and exciting.

“The Fool often appears at the beginning of a journey,” says the fortune-teller. 

Damiel nods but doesn’t reply, so she turns over the middle card. “Someone has been very close to you for a long time. I can’t tell if he was a brother, or a lover, or both.”

Such distinctions are not important to what Cassiel is, to what Damiel was, to what the two of them were together.

“This is how he sees you now,” says the fortune-teller.

A slender building stands atop a barren crag. Lightning strikes it from several sides. People are falling from it. Flames and storms surround it. The card is labeled “The Tower.”

“This card means destructive change and suffering,” the fortune-teller says. “Also liberation. This one is devastated by your decision, for all that he knows you chose to follow your heart.”

Damiel’s throat and chest suddenly feel tight. He knows this is an emotion, but he still isn’t sure which one. Is this the one called regret? Grief? He remembers Cassiel didn’t approve of his choice, but he doesn’t remember the disapproval being strong. (How strange, to _not remember_ something!) He would know Cassiel’s mind if he were still an angel, Damiel realizes. Angels know everything. Is that the source of the devastation?

He turns his eyes back to the fortune-teller. She flips over the final card.

“You have a new lover. This is what she thinks of you.”

The card is labeled “The Sun.” A rayed yellow sun with a human face fills half the card. A child with a crown of flowers, arms outstretched, rides a white horse. A red banner flutters behind. 

“To your lover, you bring innocence, vitality, self-confidence, success. This is a happy relationship, such that few experience.”

Damiel’s chest expands and his stomach softens. His mouth widens in a grin. He knows the names of these feelings: Relief and joy.

The fortune-teller puts the cards away. “Show me your palm.”

She cups his hand in both of hers and studies it for a long time.

“Your lines are most unusual. Your past is obscure. As if you were not fully alive, and yet more than alive. Tremendous compassion, thirst for knowledge, but little experience.”

Her fingertip rests on his palm. He can’t see anything unusual about where she is touching him. That must be why she’s the palm reader and he’s—well, he isn’t sure what he is yet. 

“Here, suddenly, you become very...real. Solid. Embodied. I’ve seen it in people who are in love for the first time. That’s true of you, but there’s more. Something else has brought you into the fullness of life.”

Damiel doesn’t respond to this either, because Peter warned him not to lead the fortune teller. “Just sit there and listen to what she says,” Peter had told him. “I guarantee it will be interesting.”

Damiel yearns to tell the medium everything. How right she is. Why everything is so new for him. He bursts with desire to tell the entire world about itself, to remind it how precious it is, to force it to see its own beauty, before it’s too late. 

But, mindful of Peter’s advice, he merely says instead, “What do you read in my future?” 

The fortune teller gazes at his palm a long time, and runs her slender finger along the lines. He is riveted by the sensation, warm and tingling and slightly erotic. He and Marion have explored — curiously, tenderly, avidly — what his body is capable of feeling. But they haven’t done this. 

“You will live a long life. You will have a close marriage. You will have a child,” the fortune-teller says. “You will be happy. Except for one thing.”

“What’s that?” Damiel’s body trembles. Peter called this emotion “anxiety.” He remembers what it was like to witness anxiety in humans. But he didn’t know what it _felt_ like, until now.

“The one you were close to for so long. I see great sadness.”

Damiel misses his eternal companion, but even with the fortune-teller’s readings, he can’t imagine Cassiel’s knowing great sadness about his choice. Each did what was in his nature. Cassiel had accepted what was in the nature of angels—and people—for a long time. Hadn’t he? 

Outside, his friend Peter is waiting, in his old raincoat. As he did the first day Damiel was a mortal, he hands him a cup of coffee. Damiel understands now that this coffee is “bad.” It doesn’t taste the way most people think coffee should taste. He loves it all the more for that, loves Peter all the more for appreciating it, and sharing that appreciation with him.

“Still skeptical that any humans can recognize us former angels?” Peter says, grinning his crooked grin. He wraps both hands around his own steaming paper cup. At least the bad coffee is hot on this chilly day. 

“I’m not prepared to make a final decision,” says Damiel. “Finally to suspect instead of forever knowing all? ’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.”

“Speaking of not knowing all, I’m going to have to get you back to the library soon,” says Peter. “You’re using ‘consummation’ incorrectly.”

They stroll toward the Staatsbibliotek, sipping their bad, hot coffee.


End file.
